September 14, 2010 Revolutionize the Way Your Kids Eat in 5 Easy Steps
Childhood Obesity Awareness Month Blog Carnival
This article was written for inclusion in the blog carnival hosted by Littlestomaks to promote awareness of childhood obesity as part of the National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. Please read to the end of this article to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.
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You've heard all the reports. Our kids are overweight. Type 2 Diabetes is on the rise. America's children are facing a crisis.
In response, experts repeatedly assert the importance of good nutrition. It's as if everyone thinks parents only need to know more about which foods to provide -- 1/2 cup of cottage cheese, or a serving of broccoli -- and presto, our kids will all be healthy eaters. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, never before has a nation known so much about nutrition and yet eaten so poorly.
If you want to change how your kids eat, you have to change the eating system.
And that doesn't take a knowledge of nutrition. (You already know what your kids should eat.) In fact, nutrition sometimes gets in the way because it directs your attention to the food, not to how your children behave in relation to food. And it's the behavior that counts.
Below I've listed 5 sequential steps you can take to revolutionize how your kids eat. Work your way through the list and I promise you'll be amazed.
1) If you change only 1 thing...shift your attention from nutrition to habits.
Stop looking at food and start seeing habits. They're everywhere. Indeed, if you do nothing more than keep the idea of habits in mind when you feed your children, you'll start getting the results you desire. That's because adopting the "habits-frame-of-mind" automatically steers you in the correct direction.
The "habits-frame-of-mind" shows you that it is not really important to determine whether any particular item is OK to eat at any particular time. Rather, what matters is what you are teaching your children about when, why and how much of those things they should consume throughout their lives.
For instance, it's only moderately important to know how many grams of fat there are in a Chocolate Coconut Cake Donut from Dunkin Donuts (18g, or half your child’s daily allotment). However, it's extremely important to know how often to eat one. Your children won’t learn that lesson unless you teach it to them explicitly.
Nutrition is the wrong paradigm for teaching kids to eat right because eating right isn’t really about food, it’s about behavior — what, when, why and how much someone chooses to eat. And for most people (and especially for kids) those choices are made based on habits — how frequently they eat fresh, natural food compared to processed items; whether they eat a variety of foods or the same stuff each day; and whether they eat only when they're hungry and not when they're full.
Read Adopt the Habits-Frame-of-Mind and Slackers Rule.
2) If you change 2 things...also start looking beyond the immediate meal.
Eating habits need to be considered in terms of days or weeks, not individual meals, because it’s the pattern of eating the matters most (and patterns are hard to see when you’re standing up close). Read The 10 Most “Dangerous” Foods.
For kids, it’s especially important to consider where their snacking will lead them. Juice leads kids to soda; breakfast bars steer them towards cookies; crackers point them towards chips. Read When is a Cookie Not a Cookie? and Virus Sufferers Choose Granola.
3) If you change 3 things...consider eliminating sweet drinks from your kids' daily diets.
Many nutritionists now believe that eliminating soft drinks from our kids’ diets would be the single most effective way to combat childhood obesity. But it's not just that soda drinkers consume more sugar than non soda drinkers. Soda drinkers also consume less milk, less protein, less fiber, less vitamin D, less calcium... and the list goes on.
Even though young kids don’t typically drink sugary sodas, the juice, chocolate milk, and sports drinks they do drink gets them in the habit of drinking sweet flavored beverages. That opens the door to sugary soda later on. Read The Dregs of All the Drinks, Training Tiny Taste Buds, and The (Chocolate) Milk Mistake.
4) If you change 4 things…upgrade the quality of your kids’ snacks.
Did you know that kids now get more than a ¼ of their calories from snacks? By itself, that’s not such bad news. But most snack calories come from desserts and sweetened beverages. What’s more, salty snacks – i.e. potato chips, tortilla chips, pretzels -- and candy are the fastest growing category of snack consumption.
You don’t have to eliminate snacks to teach your kids good eating habits; you just have to be smart about snacking. Remember:
- Snack is a time, not a kind of food. Read Think Snack TIME not Snack Food.
- Snacks are mini-meals make from meal-quality foods. Read 10 Ways Improving Your Kids’ Snacking Will Improve YOUR Life.
- If it’s sold in the snack aisle, it’s a treat. Read The Potato Chip Challenge: How We Decide What Snacks to Give Our Kids.
5) If you change 5 things...stop obsessing about vegetables.
Are vegetables important? Sure. Are they worth the contortions parents go through to get their kids to eat them? No. Especially because the tactics most parents rely on—bribing, begging, pressuring—aren’t just ineffective, they usually backfire.
Instead, recognize that your children's acceptance of peas is related to their penchant for pasta, pizza, and pretzels (or any of the other items that dominate their days) and re-proportion what your kids eat most.
Giving kids small amounts of fruits and vegetables throughout the day is a strategy that pays off big. Not only do a few bites here and there really add up, but presenting fruits and vegetables all the time will teach them to prioritize fruits and vegetables, will help them develop a taste for them, and it will stop all the struggles at dinner (that benefit alone makes the strategy worth it).
Read 10 Ways Kids Learn to Hate Veggies and 10 Ways Kids Learn to Love Veggies.
~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~
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Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:
7 Things Parents Say That Cause Eating and Weight Problems in Kids Michelle May, Physician and author of Eat What You Love Love What You Eat, highlights a few things parents say which can have unintended consequences (@EatWhatYouLove)
Childhood Obesity Kia Robertson of Today I Ate a Rainbow suggests that prevention of childhood obesity should start with education and educating parents about basics of healthy eating by breaking it into achievable parts (@eatingarainbow)
Childhood Obesity: A Reality Check Dr Susan Rubin, founder of BSF, suggests we change our approach to looking at childhood obesity (@DrSuRu)
Childhood Obesity: Prevention Starts in Infancy Nutrition expert Sarah Fennel reminds us that prevention is the best cure and offers a few tips to raise healthy eaters (@FoodFunHealth)
Giving Our Children a Chance at Health Registered dietitian Susan Dopart offers tips to parents for taking charge of their child's health in the world of over-processed "kid foods" (@smnutritionist)
Healthy School Campaigns Works on Creating Healthy Food Environments A report on Chicago's Healthy School Campaigns (HFC), a non profit dedicated to creating a healthy food environment in schools
How to Prevent and Manage Childhood Obesity Registered dietitian Jessica Levinson offers practical tips to prevent and manage childhood obesity (@JLevinsonRD)
Lessons I have Learned as a Mom Registered dietitian Alysa Bajenaru shares some of the lessons she has learned that have helped her develop a good understanding of what it takes to feed her kids (@InspiredRD)
Looking for a New Trend in Childhood Obesity? Registered dietitian Elizabeth Rahavi of the IFIC brings the focus back on family in the debate about childhood obesity (@FoodInsight)
Losing Weight: It Starts in Your Head Registered dietitian Cindy Williams reminds us of the power of attitude and mindset in losing weight and controlling obesity (@nutritionchic)
Making the Grade Registered dietitian Sally Kuzemchak evaluates her son's school programs on healthy eating and physical activity (@RMNutrition)
Obesity and GERD: A Family Affair Jan Gambino, author of Reflux 101, writes about the link between overweight and GERD
Parents, Let's Take a Positive Approach to Childhood Obesity Registered dietitian Ashley Rosales from the Dairy Council of California encourages parents to take a positive approach in helping their kids build healthy habits
Revolutionize the Way Your Kids Eat in Five Easy Steps Sociologist Dr Dina Rose suggests we shift our focus from nutrition to eating habits if we are serious about solving childhood obesity (@DrDrRose)
Surprising Easy Solution for Preventing Childhood Obesity Research shows benefits of extended breastfeeding in reducing risk of childhood obesity (@TwinToddlersDad)
The Problem Behind Childhood Obesity Ken Whitman, Publisher of Organic Connections, points out that our national priorities concerning childhood obesity are misplaced and calls for a renewed focus on the health of our nations kids.
Yoga Gets Kids Moving Registered dietitian Danielle Omar has an interesting suggestion for solving childhood obesity - get your kids into yoga! (@2eatwellRD)
Reader Comments (5)
Thank you for giving parents no-nonsense advice. I will definitely be passing this on.
I agree 100%, its not about nutrition.
We've wasted so much time and energy focusing on calories, carbs and fat grams.
How do we get schools and well meaning wellness committees to understand your common sense points?
Alysa: Thanks for your kind comments, your support and your willingness to spread the word.
Susan: The nutrition message is so, so loud, it's hard to imagine being able to combat it. Perhaps together, with people like you and Alysa on board, we can build a new movement and change the conversation from nutrition to habits. (It's my dream! Thanks for sharing it!)
Dina
Excellent points, wonderful perspective.
As parents, we should look at our own habits before it is too late! Your tips apply equally well to adults.
An interesting question is - how do habits form? By repeated exposure to an issue or problem and by repeated positive enforcement to our response to that situation. Satisfying our hunger by eating food is a situation we face every couple of hours. Our eating habits form based on what is presented to us as food, how it is presented, how we feel while we eat it and afterwards, and what kind of respnse we receive from others around us. As parents, we need to be mindful of all of these dimensions of the process of eating.
I don't want to diminish the value of nutrition science because it does offer useful information. The problem lies in the application of this information. If we take it literally without regard to other factors inolved in the process of eating, we run the risk of developing undesirable behaviors while forcing the so called "healthy" food.
Your post is a good reminder to focus on habits and not on food. Of course the food should be healthy, but by itself, it is not enough.
Once again, a wonderful perspective on how to approach eating wtih our families. I know sometimes I can get bogged down on making everything healthy that my kids are begging for the junk and indulge in that junk at friends' houses (that's a topic for another time! LOL!) Thanks again for the reminder to look at the big picture.